It started with a book.
Like a great many of my
colleagues, I'm a (mostly) self taught astrologer. It all started
when I was twelve years old and stumbled across (yes) Linda Goodman's
Sun Signs. I dug it. It's kind of fashionable among the
astrologentsia to slam Linda, but I think we all owe her a debt of gratitude.
I mean, as prose the book kind of sucks, but it was accessible,
one of the first to blend astrology with pop culture references.
She essentially dragged modern astrology kicking and screaming into the
mainstream where it could be discovered by a great many potential practitioners
and clients. Had my initial, preteen exposure to astrology been through
the works of Alan Leo or Rob Hand (god love them, and today I own and cherish
books by both of them), I'd have no doubt run screaming, utterly terrified,
in the opposite direction. But I read Linda's book and went, "Oh
yeah,
I recognize that, I get it." So, I'm glad Linda
Goodman was around.
Eventually I got someone
to explain the hard stuff to me.
In 1989, just as I was looking
down the barrel of a Saturn return, a guy I worked with introduced me to
the first astrologer I'd ever met. I ended up studying with her formally
for two years, and those classes helped me come to grips with some of the
arcane and mystifying stuff I'd been utterly unable to grasp from books--stuff
like secondary progressions (a concept that still boggles the mind, but
which I at least know how to use). Finally, after all those years
of head scratching befuddlement, I could finally work with progressions
and transits, return and relocation charts, midpoints and composites.
Hell, I could progress relocated composites if I wanted to!
So Diane Ronngren,
thank you.
I proceeded to learn even
more by doing--badly.
I began doing readings for
people in 1990. I would get so freaked out before each one that I'd
get diarrhea. It was bad--and I'd been getting up on stages and
singing in front of people for about twenty years, so you'd think I'd have
had the stage fright under control.
I don't have any tapes of
those old sessions (thankfully) but in retrospect they were pretty lame;
of course, it's kind of a miracle that I (and my stomach) survived them
at all. What made them bad was not lack of technical knowledge, and
it wasn't lack of preparation. Lord knows I spent hours and hours
and hours on those first charts, and I threw every single bit of technique
at my disposal into the pot, hoping something magical would brew.
But I lacked experience, I didn't really know to prepare wisely, and I
lacked faith in astrology. I was still at that "Oh my god this actually
works!"
stage--my occasional insightful prognostication or interpretation shocked
me more than my clients.
I think the problem with
those first ungainly little sessions was that whatever I as doing, it wasn't
really astrology, in the sense of "speaking the language of the stars."
It was more...I don't know.. muttering
the language of the stars,
playing with what I'd learned to see if it worked, nervous that I'd make
some mortifying blunder (I made lots). So my early sessions were
just shockingly bad, and to all my early clients, I'm sorry!-- and thanks
for being nice to me anyway.
Dana reintroduced me to
basic literary form.
It was probably two or three
years into the whole astrology business before I actually began to create
outlines to work from in a session, an idea gleaned from an offhand comment
made by fellow astrologer and awe-inspiring writer Dana
Gerhardt. From talking with Dana and getting a couple of killer
readings from her, it was obvious to me that she was doing much more than
just running the charts, sorting through the rubble for current aspects,
and riffing away. Girlfriend was outlining things and coming
up with metaphors and analogies and actually structuring a reading around
a recognizable beginning-middle-end kind of format. Imagine!
It was about this time that I remember thinking, "Gee, maybe people really
do
learn something important in college." So Dana Gerhardt, M.A., thank
you. I now outline all my readings and it's made the difference between
flying by the seat of my pants and really feeling prepared.
I went to the mountain.
In 1993 or 94 I splurged
and commissioned a taped reading from Steven
Forrest, whose wonderful books I had long admired. Needless to
say, listening to this extraordinary astro-yoda, a veteran of about a gazillion
astrological consultations, made me feel like a complete fraud as an astrologer.
This guy's reputation is well deserved: he does absolutely beautiful work.
First Dana, then Steven Forrest, raised my personal benchmark to a standard
that I'm still not living up to. So thanks, Steve. I think.
I realized astrology could
only take me so far.
Today, in my tenth year
of practicing astrology, I'm not done learning. But increasingly,
it seems the things I need to learn in order to do better astrology don't
have anything to do with astrology itself. Astrology, while a perfect
language for describing the world to those who speak the language,
can only take one so far in interpreting its insights to the astrologically
illiterate. To be effective interpreters for those who don't speak
the language, we have to be able to enter our clients' frame of reference
and translate our perceptions into parallels that are meaningful to them.
The more we know about the world of real people, and about more or less
universal
frames of reference (e.g., film, literature, art, music, philosophy, sports,
TV sitcoms), the better equipped we are to communicate universal truths
to the 99% of the population who have no real understanding of astrology.
Unfortunately, this means that just learning good astrology does not
make one a good astrologer, any more than learning to type fast makes
one a great writer.
In the end...
I suppose everyone follows
their own particular path to astrological enlightenment, but I suspect
all these routes share a few common landmarks: first wading in shyly, then
stalking and mastering various techniques, proceeding to the preliminary
stage of inflicting ghastly readings on unsuspecting clients, and eventually
learning from experience and from great people you respect.
But only recently has the
astrological culture hinted at a final initiation rite, that of finding
one's own astrological voice and making the leap from technician to artist.
It's a difficult leap to make, because artistry is by its very nature personal,
and so no one else can tell you exactly how to get there. You can't
read it in a book or learn it from masters. Instead, you have to
dig deep into your reservoirs of knowledge, compassion, and curiosity and
see what you've got on hand, and then find the courage to share that with
your clients in a spirit of ferocious creative collaboration.
It's a cool job.
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